


Afterthought

by shewhotalkstohyacinths



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nursemaid Bond, Sarcastic Q, Veiled references to Sherlock, all's well that ends well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:47:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhotalkstohyacinths/pseuds/shewhotalkstohyacinths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...in which Q is in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bond is unavailable and the patching-up is done as an afterthought. That boy will be the death of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterthought

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fill for the prompt "Bond/Q - healing wounds" over at Tumblr. We're very open to prompts and actively encourage them so please feel free to drop us a line. We need the inspiration.
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer - Not mine, just playing with them.

He sits hunched in his boxer shorts, plain black, tight against his thighs. His hand are pressed together in his lap, knuckles white, skin torn. His nails, once manicured to neatness and perfection, are bitten down to the quick. There is blood and dirt caked under them and Bond tries not to visualise what that means.

Bond can’t get the haunted look out of his mind when he thinks of Q’s first words to him.

“I tried to claw my way out. My hands, they’re in ribbons. And all those people…”

Bond had found him wrapped in a blue blanket sitting on a medic’s gurney. Against medical advice, he’d brought him back and, in place of the scared child he’d briefly allowed himself to be, Bond is left to deal with the barb-tongued Quartermaster to whom pain, weakness and fear are all so far removed its unhealthy.

“Careful, 007. I can feel how close it is to the nerve. My shoulder is twitching when you…ow.”

He betrays himself with an exclamation.

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Q. A slight nudge from my left hand and you’ll be screaming bloody murder.”

Hardly. Q has been silent throughout the ‘treatment’, has not uttered a single sound but a wince, a quiet groan, the odd inhalation of breath. He takes his suffering like a man, not like the boy he looks to be.

He snorts unbecomingly.

“You’re not exactly gentle, Bond. I certainly wouldn’t trust you with my fine bone china. It’s an heirloom. Not for clumsy hands.”

“Would you rather me call an ambulance and have you taken to hospital? The paramedics were adamant after all. They said you were in shock. Pale as a ghost, you were.”

“I was not.”

He’d been embarrassed, shamed by the perceived flaw. He’d wanted to appear brave. Sometimes, Bond wishes he’d just let go, to know that he doesn’t have to be stoic around him.

He doesn’t have to be a mountain, sentinel or robot.

He sighs, so boyish, so young despite his years.

“Just…get on with it, 007. It’s just a few scratches. I would’ve dealt with it myself only I’m not double jointed.”

“Much the shame.”

“Times and places, Bond.”

There are times for flirtatious remarks. There are places for the realisation of such remarks.

An empty office within Q Branch is not one of those placed and this certainly isn’t one of those times.

Q’s skin is alabaster. Carved white marble. Smooth, almost hairless, scar-less but for the appendectomy mark that lies just North of his hipbone. A Quartermaster isn’t meant to be scarred but for the calluses on his fingers and the lacerations on his psyche from the immorality of his ambiguous life.

007’s Q isn’t meant to be harmed, yet here he is, hunched and damaged, the victim of an explosion that rocked half of Baker Street. Reports confirm seven dead, nineteen (including Q) injured. A lucky escape, they say. It could’ve been worse. The rest of the victims found their way to Accident and Emergency, to Intensive Care, to the morgue.

Q found his way back to Bond, as is customary, the bird with the broken wing attempting to fly back to the only ‘nest’ it knows.

“What were you doing there anyway? Isn’t Baker Street a little out of your jurisdiction?”

The sharp breath forces Bond’s hand to still just for a moment. Some of the wounds quite likely require stitches. He’s doing the best he can but there is only so much an agent can do. He doesn’t want to make a tapestry of Q’s back but he’ll do his best.

“Contrary to popular belief I do not turn to stone if I leave the building OR the vicinity.”

“No, but you generally spend your lunch hour playing Mah Jong on the iPad.”

“I was meeting a relative.”

He had only stopped off at the convenience store for a packet of polos on his way back.

There’s an irony in being blown up off duty whilst craving mints. Q doesn’t want to imagine how pathetic that is.

“You were meeting a relative, Q?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I wasn’t conceived in a laboratory, Bond. And please don’t assume that a few casual fumbles gives you the right to my life story. I do have family that I may or may not have mentioned.”

“Of course. Brothers, I believe. Same father, different mother. Older. One in quite the position in the government.”

Another snort. Another wince.

“Hardly. He answers the phone and eats Rich Tea biscuits with Her Majesty’s dog walkers.”

“Your other sibling is some kind of private eye?’

Q pauses. Bond sees him bite his lip in the reflection of the window.

Perhaps he revealed too much.

“Of course you knew. Why wouldn’t you? Why should I not assume you know every tiny detail of my life after three nights together?”

“I’m not stalking you, if that’s what you mean. I just like to know of any significant others. Important people, and such. Just in case.”

Next of kin always seem important to those Bond gets close to. He hopes above all things he never has to contact Q’s.

Of course, he knew all there was to know even before they shared intimacy.

He realises how messed up that is.

“Look. My brothers, they’re hardly significant. I barely see them. I texted them to let them know I was still alive and got a monosyllabic response.”

“But you saw least one of them today. And in plain sight. Surely you know of the risks?”

“My brother can take care of himself.”

“Alas, the same can’t be said for you.”

The tension irks more blood from the wounds in his back. Bond has to hold gauze against one of them. Wounded pride hurts so much more than the bruises and slices of flying rubble.

“Yes, well, I do apologise for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Apology accepted. By me. M, on the other hand, might be a little harder to convince.”

“And of course, you’ve never been guilty of the same thing, have you?Being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Bond smiles.

“Touche.”

He pulls out the last shards of glass and debris with careful fingers. There will be a map when this heals, a parchment across pale shoulder-blades and down, down across his spine. Bond will kiss each one of these scars, claiming them as his own, writing his name in place of where pain once marked him.

“Are you almost finished?” Q asks, his voice small but strong. It had been weak before. Frail as he looks.

Q is one of the strongest men Bond knows.

He softens. Jokes done. Bravado diminished. He strokes a finger over Q’s shoulderblade in light, soothing motions. The skin is clear. Untouched.

“You really did a number on yourself. What were you thinking crawling through that mess?”

Q winces, but whether it be from the worry and reproach in Bond’s voice or the pain of another swab of antiseptic burning ts way through is unclear.

“I was thinking that if I waited any longer for you to arrive I’d die of suffocation before the hour was out. Rather a few lines of stitches and some betadine than a coffin, wouldn’t you agree?”

He speaks quietly. It gives away the desperation he felt whilst trapped in the ground. He’d been in that cavernous crater for three hours before anybody noticed he’d fallen. Before technologies allowed the distress messages he’d frantically sent to Bond to be transferred across the ether. He’d been calm until the panic set in. Then he had screamed but nobody heard him.

“I kept trying but the signal kept dropping off. The text wouldn’t go through.”

“I know.”

“And my tracker was shattered in the blast. I kicked myself for opting for the cheaper shell. A bloody cost cutting exercise, Bond.”

“Well, we live and learn.”

“Just about. What if it had been an agent in the field? What if it had been you, Bond?”

“Stop thinking, Q.”

For a moment there is quiet.

“Of course, it took you an hour to arrive even when I did make contact.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He’d been in the gym, blasting out his tensions on a punchbag.

Bond doubts he’ll forgive himself for that for a long while yet.

“Still, alls well that ends well, eh?”

He pats Q’s patched up back. It’s done. He’s finished. Bond looks down at the foreign objects that litter the table and thinks that Q burrows under his own skin in deeper, more painful ways.

It’s almost representative.

“You’ll need a tetanus, Q. Probably some antibiotics.”

“Right.”

‘And rest.’

“Surely.”

Q turns. In an uncharacteristic show of vulnerability he leans forward and rests his forehead on Bond’s shoulder.

He sighs. Exhausted. Derailed.

“Can you just take me home?”

Bond reaches up, his fingers tentatively twisting in Q’s unruly hair and the shard burrows deeper into 007.

“Of course.”

It bleeds. A mortal wound.

This man will be the death of Bond.


End file.
